Moved closer to the vision of beating cancer

With the help of performance management and clear prioritization, Cancerfonden has made strategic shifts and moved closer towards its vision of beating cancer

We have dared to prioritize what creates the most IMPACTFUL strategic shift and what we should focus on in the short term, in order to achieve long-term strategic shifts

Ulrika Årehed Kågström
Secretary-General, Cancerfonden

The Challenge

Lacked clear prioritizes

Cancerfonden (Swedish Cancer Society) is an independent non-profit organization with the vision of beating cancer. Through financing leading research, disseminating knowledge of cancer and influencing decision-makers on crucial issues, they work to ensure that fewer people are affected by cancer and more survive it.

Cancerfonden consists of highly engaged co-workers whose work is permeated by the vision of beating cancer. It is therefore important to channel this engagement towards clear objectives, the ability to make decisions and steer the organizations’s day-to-day work in line with the vision.

To steer the organization, Cancerfonden developed a business plan before 2018 that included a large number of objectives and activities. When TIC met Cancerfonden for the first time, they had more than 80 objectives. Their challenge was to create a clearer focus that could concretize the vision without directly being at an activity-level. Having an extensive number of objectives also led to their departments working slightly too much in silos, leaving room for improved collaboration.

Moreover, Cancerfonden had a need to start working in a more data-driven way and to measure the effects they achieved within a shorter time horizon. Research, knowledge dissemination and advocacy are activities that can take a long time to generate visible effects, which created a need to cascade more high-level objectives in the organization to actionable short-term objectives.

The first step was to develop a common steering model to clarify how all departments and their strategies interact with one another in the journey towards beating cancer. The steering model was built on an approach to prioritize and focus on the most important strategic shifts and immidiate changes that could be made. In highly engaged organizations, maintaining prioritizes can sometimes be a challenge.

In the first year of Cancerfonden working with performance management, they chose to focus on prevention, which in this case means increasing public knowledge of the connection between healthy living habits and cancer. This was an area with great potential; however, at the time, only one co-worker was working within it. By clarifying that “prevention is prioritized during this steering period”, all co-workers could answer the question “how can we, within our department, be involved and contribute to this strategic shift?”.

To enable measurement of their progress, Cancerfonden chose to measure the effects they created but also the drivers, meaning the efforts made to achieve these effects.

The Solution

Selecting the most important strategic shifts

The Results

Measurable effects

Cancerfonden’s journey with performance management has created results that make a real difference. In the first two years of working with performance management, they chose to focus on increasing the awareness of healthy living habits and cancer, an area that was initially considered difficult to shift in a short time-period. By daring to prioritize and by working with performance management in a structured manner, the following results were achieved:

+ 5 % increased awareness of the connection between cancer and alcohol
+ 3 % increased awareness of the connection between cancer and excess weight

Throughout the years of working with performance management, every area Cancerfonden chose to focus on has created measurable results. During the years when new types of fundraising were prioritized, a record-high fundraising of 770 MSEK was achieved.

In addition to seeing measurable effects, Cancerfonden has also been able to build a strong culture of collaboration, where departments work together to maximize the effects of each prioritized area and cross-departmental teams now actively contribute to the vision of beating cancer.

Two memorable moments we at TIC would like to highlight from our work together:

1

Something we at TIC will never forget is our kick-off meeting together with the Secretary-General, CFO, HR Director and Business Developer. We were both excited and nervous to work with such an impactful organization and we really wanted to start our collaboration in the best possible way. Three minutes into the meeting, one of us at TIC (no name mentioned…) spilled coffee all over the table, the fitted carpet…and CFO…

2

During the first meeting with Cancerfonden, Secretary-General Ulrika said: “We have 80 objectives today – I find it hard to imagine that we will ever have less than 10.” Four weeks later, we have together prioritized those 80 objectives down to…ONE.